A picture's worth a thousand words... Well maybe not these 'pictures'!

So the elections today caused a traffic jam on my way home from work. And by traffic jam I mean I had to slow down slightly where the two roads intersect (there are no actual signs there) and actually SAW another car on the road. hahaha

18 deg and sunny today. All the jumps have been put away for the winter :( The solution to this -- XC!!! Woohoo! Doing actual courses now, so was able to get rolling and settle into a rhythm. Waaayyyy more fun. DO think a running martingale would've been a good thing though... hahaha forgot that minor detail till it was too late -- oops :)

So today's jumping theory will be illustrated in stick figures. (I just hope this posts correctly!)

awwwww stick figured didn't work :( Not a fixed-width font and I can't figure out how to change it. So now we have the revised version:

/ <-- br="" galloping.="" horse="" is="" this="" your="">

| <-- be="" before="" br="" horse="" how="" is="" jump="" this="" to="" want="" you="" your="">

_ <-- br="" don="" end="" how="" if="" is="" t="" this="" up="" you="">

hahhaha Denny illustrated all this by means of hand signals :) Basically the horse naturally gallops flat, long and down. And will get flatter, longer, and lower as you go if you let him... It is very hard (and SCARY!) to jump out of that position. So before the jump you have to convince him to go back together and get his hocks under him so he CAN jump (apparently horses don't understand physics -- but then if I recall correctly I didn't do so well in physics either!). Anyways -- this was why we got to do actual courses cause in order to play w/ the gallop and learn to adjust it, one has to actually gallop :) Fun fun fun!

He wants them sitting up 3-4 strides before the fence. Every clinician I've ever ridden w/ has a magic number (David O'Conner's was EIGHT) -- and everybody's magic # seems to differ... I like the 5 range personally (and that's together by 5, not starting to get him there then! hahaha) cause I figure that leaves enough time to adjust if the distance isn't perfect -- by 3 you're really too late! Or @ least I would be *g* But that's just my opinion.

That being said, we were doing PT courses so 3-4 is just fine cause really the horse could jump any of them at a trot (or flat-out gallop as the case may be) if necessary. But still, the concept is to learn so to be able to apply @ prelim +...

Anyways -- I have to go pretend to be social now :( Later!